Educating Our Children, to be the best that they can be, must trump
Partisan Politics.
Dear Friend,
Our citizens and their children in the year 2010 are well aware
that our young people are being short changed by an education bureaucracy that
calls out year after year for ever expanding cost per pupil with ever
decreasing results.
We know what the
problem is! So why don't we fix it?
This is not a new problem! It has been going on for 100 years. Robert
J. Herbold, formerly COO of Microsoft, wrote an article on March 14, 2005 for
Anchor Rising titled "The Deep Performance Problems With American Public
Education." Among many criticisms he quotes from "A Nation at
Risk" published 25 years ago:
"A Nation at Risk underestimated the resistance to change
from the organized interest of the K-12 public education system, at the center
of which were two big teachers unions as well as school administrators,
colleges of education, state bureaucracies, school boards, and many others.
These groups see any changes beyond the most marginal as threats to their own
jealously guarded power."
As a nation we continue to complain but do nothing about it. Our children
suffer the consequences of this inaction. An editorial in the Wall Street
Journal dated February 24, 2004 said:
"A fact of political life today is that if you favor
meaningful education reform, you can automatically count yourself a political
enemy of two groups: the teachers' unions that prefer the status quo and too
many politicians who depend on them for financial support."
Too often leaders who express an interest in fixing the problem accept
the status quo as a given and then ineptly try compromise, accept the status
quo as a given, and then ineptly try compromise solutions through negotiation
with the powers that be. As we can see, by looking at results, great education
for our children is not happening.
What does the
Constitution say?
Nowhere in the American Constitution does it mention education.
Our Founders wanted most aspects of a citizen’s life to be managed by those
closest to them. They believed in self-reliant people managing their affairs
through the family, the local community, local government, and the State wherever
possible.
Nowhere does it mention funding for K-12 Education. However, in
keeping with the charitable nature of the American people, townships starting
in Massachusetts in 1647 started funding a school teacher for towns over 50
people. From this humble beginning it became a priority and tradition to fund
some level of schooling locally. This tradition was supported by the Founders
principles of local decision-making.
Over time local and state governments enacted mandates that were
intended to benefit the children. In 1827 Massachusetts passed a law requiring
towns over 500 people to provide schooling. In 1852 Massachusetts enacted a
mandatory schooling law. By 1885 sixteen states had signed on to compulsory
schooling and by 1918 all states complied.
In 1857 the National Teachers Association (NTA) was formed. It has
now become the NEA union. In 1867 the Department of Education was formed to
provide uniformity between states and in 1916 the American Federation of
Teachers was formed, now called the AERA.
The 16th Amendment, ratified on February 25, 1913 allowed the
State and Federal Governments to tax the income of all citizens. Since then
there has been political pressure to become a welfare-socialized nation.
Consequently more and more funding for schools has been approved by Congress to
feed a bloated bureaucracy and Union coffers.
Government Owned
and Operated Organizations fail to provide products and services that
continually increase client satisfaction while reducing cost.
Good intentions must be verified when they do not get good
results. Businesses, like education, controlled by politicians and unions are
doomed to fail because the decision maker’s goals are in conflict with the
client expectations.
The career politician says he cares about the children when he
approves higher spending for socialized education, but in reality his real
intention is to buy votes to get re-elected. The Union boss says he cares about
the teachers when he lobbies for restrictive work rules to be enshrined into
law, but in reality his real intention is to get more dues and power from an
expanding base of union workers.
The end result of government owned and operated schools are that
our children get a deteriorating education and cannot compete effectively on
the world stage.
Citizen Owned and
Operated Organizations provide products and services that continually increase
client satisfaction while reducing cost.
Bruce Henderson, founder of Boston Consulting Group, shared his
perspectives on natural competition with his client companies in
the 1960s.
Prior to this time most large corporations operated like nations,
conquering and oppressing the people. This robber baron behavior, management
versus the worker, spawned unions to protect the worker. The end result was
un-productive, resulting in poor quality products and services and
unpredictable profits.
Corporations that embraced natural competition became strategic
enterprises that focused all employees on customer satisfaction. By being responsive
to customer needs a symbiotic relationship developed. Customers got what they
wanted, employees increased income by growing into higher paying jobs and
shareholders got a worthwhile predictable return on their capital invested to
grow the company.
These Companies focused on becoming one of the three or four high
growth, market share, leaders that aggressively went down the experience curve
improving quality and reducing cost. The end result was a transformation of
American business that contributed to world GDP growth of 5% per year for 50
years and enabled America to grow to $14 trillion 3 to 4 times bigger than any
other nation.
Let's analyze a
typical State run school business.
Arizona became my choice for review because I spend 6 months in Surprise,
about 30 miles from the Phoenix airport, during the winter months. I researched
data from the Arizona Budget process www.azleg.gov/jblc.htm and from www.localschooldirectory.com, published in 2010. My goal is to reconcile the data into a
typical business Profit/<Loss> statement and then compare the results to
a typical services free market business model.
The State operates 2,200 public K-12 schools, teaching 1,051,015
students. This is accomplished with 51,850 teachers for a ratio of 20 students
per teacher. Arizona's National Ranking is 41 out of 51 states including DC.
The States expenditures for 2008/2009 are $8.3 billion or about $8,200 per
student.
The bureaucracy has deemed it necessary that the 51,850 teachers
need supporting staff of 35,305 people to teach 20 students per day. The
supporting staff are: 14,520 instructional aides, 645 elementary counselors,
728 secondary counselors, 824 librarians, 2,044 librarian support staff, 453
laptop encryption administrators, 555 laptop encryption support staff, 7,403
student support services, 5,822 school support staff, and 2,311 school
administrators.
If the Arizona
Public Schools were run like a free market business it is possible to save $2.6
billion and improve the quality of education.
Keeping the quantity of teacher’s constant and using an average
salary of $35,000 for elementary and $50,000 for secondary teachers in the
model it was possible to develop an overhead rate and a G&A rate. The
current budget shows an overhead on teachers of 232% and a G&A rate of
13.9%.
The, run it like a business,
model used an overhead rate of 120% and a G&A of 8%. This competitive approach
would yield a savings of $2.6 billion.
The real solutions
will take leadership and courage not platitudes that retain the status quo.
Solutions with real potential that will educate our children to be
the best that they can be are:
A) Terminate unions in all public organizations. 
Provide all
children with vouchers to go to any school of choice. C) Let the public schools fail and be
liquidated if they cannot compete. D) Sell off all public schools K-12 to
private enterprise.
Your Friend
Brian Sear
PS: If you are a
patriot, and would like to kick the tires before becoming a "Compete and
Empower" enthusiast go to www.briansear.com/ Click on
"Are you a Patriot" and get a free copy of the essence of Chapter 9,
a Contract with America, by clicking on the red button on the left side of Wake
Up America.
I am sharing the greatness of America in half hour conversations,
including Q&A, with lunch associations and one-hour speeches with Tea Party
Groups. If you know of groups that might be interested e-mail me at brian@briansear.com and I will contact them. To purchase the book go to
www.briansear.com or on line to Amazon, B&N etc.
